Google Is Now Showing “Hidden” Facebook Pages

, , ,

Originally Facebook was completely cut off from Google. All posts by personal profiles were hidden from the search engine, and you couldn’t do searches inside of Facebook that way. It appears that somehow Google has been able to get access, and some searches for Facebook content will display results with direct links to posts from personal profiles. This may have come from people sharing the links through other crawlable sites (such as Twitter). At any rate, some of these posts are now showing up in the Google SERPs.

Read the full article here:
Google Search Results Show Some Facebook User Posts Leaking Out Of Walled Garden

/0 Comments

Google Search Preferences Saved In Account Now

,

Does it bother you when you have to reset your search preferences (such as turning off Google Instant) on Google when when you switch from using a laptop to an iPad or a computer? And if you change your browser, you have to reset those preferences again. Google has announced that search preferences can now be saved at the account level. As long as you are signed in to your Google account, saved search settings will be available from any computer.

Read the full article here:
New: Save Your Google Search Settings & Take Them With You

/0 Comments

Facebook Status Updates For Businesses: 7 Tips

, , ,

Facebook has implemented an algorithm called “EdgeRank” which adjusts the weight of importance of any post based on how popular it is. So how can you improve the EdgeRank of your posts on your business accounts on Facebook? Here’s a few ways:

  1. Scheduling – Pay attention to when your followers are most active on Facebook, when they’re most likely to see new posts. Try experimenting with different times of the day. Facebook allows you to schedule posts, so this is easier to do than you might have expected.
  2. Add tags – Pages that you’ve “liked” will be more readily available so that if you want to add a tag it will be easier to find these. To find any sort of connecting page to get a tag, just type in an “@” sign and start typing. You can discover many tags this way – it’ll help promotion.
  3. Add a location – When you do a status update, there’s a “placemark” icon that looks like an inverted teardrop you can click on. This can come in handy to tag events or to put your business location when people have a reason to come visit.
  4. Target specific locations – You can make your post in a specific place (instead of “Public”). Doing this is good if you are needing only to connect with people that are in that location, for example if you are promoting an event in that area.
  5. Target by language – Use the same customization you use for location (instead of “Public”) to target a language. This way you can do a very personal outreach to members of the public who are more comfortable with a different language.
  6. Add pictures/photos – If you put photos in your posts, it will grab attention much more readily and make it a lot more tempting to share or comment on.
  7. Emphasize a post – You can pick out special posts and draw attention by either “highlighting” it (click the start at the top of the post) to make it go across both columns in your timeline or you can pin your update. Pinning it will make it stay on top of all updates so that something of particular importance will stay at the top until you unpin it. To do this, click the pencil icon and choose “Pin to Top”.

Make your Facebook posts stand out by trying any one of these or a combination. See what works best for your page and keep those practices.

Read the original article here:
7 Tips For Crafting Local Business Updates In Facebook

/0 Comments

Google AdWords Ad Extensions Can Improve Performance

,

Ad extensions allow you to show additional information on your Google AdWords ads such as displaying map with business locations, linking to additional pages within the site, showing a click-to-call phone number, connecting your Google Plus account +1s, and showing product images, titles and prices (from Google Merchant Center). Google has reported that using ad extensions can increase CTR by 30% on average. Setting up Ad Extensions is fairly easy to do, simply check the “Ad extensions” tab in AdWords and look through the options there to set up. After implementing these options, keep an eye on performance to see what differences the extensions provide, and be aware you can check some of these performances by using Segment->Click Type in each AdWords page.

Read the full article here:
6 Ways Google Ad Extensions Can Improve Your AdWords Campaign – SEOmoz (blog)

/0 Comments

Google’s First SERP Down To 7 Listings

,

Google appears to be testing some changes to the first page of results. The first listing is getting additional “sitelinks” underneath in many cases, from two links to as many as six additional links. For search results that have the first listing containing these sitelinks, there is now only seven listings total on the front page. It doesn’t matter how many sitelinks, it’s still seven listings. For an example, Google “ebay” and check the results.

Another change is that Google is not limiting the number of results appearing for a single domain to two per page – it looks as though one domain can potentially dominate the entire front page now, without limitation.

Whether or not these are permanent changes or just tests we’ll see as time progresses.

Read the full article here:
7 Is The New 10? Google Showing Fewer Results & More From Same Domain

/0 Comments

How To Refine Google Display Network Ad Targeting

,

People seem to think that the Google Display Network (GDN) is like drinking from a fire hose: turn it on and get a ton of traffic. But as a campaign manager you need to control the stream of visitors or else your GDN campaign will drown in unqualified clicks. Within Google AdWords there are number of tactics to exclude specific traffic from your GDN campaigns. These exclusion methods are of two types: behavioral and demographic. Behavior Exclusion includes Targeted Keywords, Ad Placements, Webpage Topics and Remarketing (more effective). Demographic Exclusion includes Age and Gender and Excluding Users by Interest.

Read the full article here:
Google Display Network Exclusion Tactics: Don’t Drink from the Fire Hose – Search Engine Watch

/0 Comments

Client Center Changes in Microsoft adCenter

,

Advertisers can know change or add agencies without losing their entire account history, thanks to the updated version of adCenter by Microsoft. Microsoft are now calling that “Agency Enablement”, through that the agencies can link or unlink to client accounts, control billing preferences and manage client accounts at the account level, et al. This will provide immense flexibility for advertisers.

Read the full article here:
Microsoft Revamps AdCenter For Agency Relationships

/0 Comments

Google Shopping Accounts Now Editable In AdWords Editor

,

Google made an update to AdWords Editor that allows for changes to details with Product Listing Ads, ads that are used in line with Google Shopping accounts. Now businesses that use Google Shopping can make changes to the advertisements that display on search results using AdWords Editor. Actual content for the ads come from the product feed set up in Google Merchant Center, but other details are now adjustable inside AdWords Editor.

Read the full article here:
Google Shopping Updates

/0 Comments

Does Social Media Work For Businesses?

, ,

A lot of businesses do not think they need social media or in some cases, even any online marketing. They see it as a way to talk to friends and nothing more. The thing that must be realized is that in order to properly take advantage of social media, a business will realistically need six months or more. Usually the basic level of interaction is set at 7 times of contact before business can be done, but some say as many as 21 interactions before a close can happen.

There are five good approaches to take to make sure this can happen if you want to get started in social:

  1. Put some money in to get a solid web site.
  2. Do proper keyword research.
  3. Start congregating with target customers online, learn their language, their questions.
  4. Use a blog, share your expertise there.
  5. Share all types of content, become a valuable resource for your customer base.

If you do these things, it’ll be a solid start to using social media for business in a productive way.

Read the full article here:
When Social Media Marketing Doesn’t Work for You

/0 Comments

Google Says If You’ve Blocked GoogleBot

,

There are many webmasters who have their reason to block GoogleBot from their site. Your site can still be listed, but if you’ve prevented the GoogleBot from crawling your pages Google will display it clearly in the SERPs. Instead of showing the standard description tag (or another snippet) it will say, “A description for this result is not available because of this site’s robots.txt – learn more.” This may be worth knowing if you care about what displays on Google when people find you there and you’ve been blocking the GoogleBot.

Read the full article here:
Google Search Descriptions Now Say If GoogleBot Is Blocked

/0 Comments